Bosch and Nvidia have announced a collaborative effort to create artificial intelligence self-driving systems for mass market cars.

The two companies are working on an AI self-driving car computer built using NVIDIA’s deep learning software and hardware which will allow vehicles to be trained on the complexities of driving, operate autonomously and receive updates over the air with new features and capabilities.

The new AI car computer system will be based on Nvidia’s DRIVE™ PX technology with Nvidia’s new complete system-on-chip ‘Xavier’ – designed to achieve level-4 autonomous driving.

Xavier is Nvidia’s new AI supercomputer designed for use in self-driving cars.

According to Nvidia, the Xavier chip comes packed with 7 billion transistors and can deliver up to 20 trillion operations per second whilst only drawing 20 watts of power. The company claims that a single Xavier AI processor will be able to replace its DRIVE PX 2 unit configured with dual mobile SoCs and dual discrete GPUs, and at a fraction of the power consumption.

The high-performance chip is necessary to handle “the massive amount of computation required for the tasks self-driving vehicles must perform”, such as running deep neural nets to sense surroundings, understanding the 3D environment, localizing themselves on an HD map, predicting the behavior and position of other objects, in addition to computing car dynamics and a safe path forward.

The partnership was announced at Bosch Connected World, in Berlin, by Bosch CEO, Dr. Volkmar Denner.

“We want automated driving to be possible in every situation. As early as the next decade, driverless cars will also be a part of everyday life. Bosch is advancing automated driving on all technological fronts. We aim to assume a leading role in the field of artificial intelligence, too,” Denner said in a statement.

Jen-Hsun Huang, founder and CEO, Nvidia, commented:

“Self-driving cars is a challenge that can finally be solved with recent breakthroughs in deep learning and artificial intelligence.

“Using DRIVE PX AI car computer, Bosch will build automotive-grade systems for the mass production of autonomous cars. Together we will realize a future where autonomous vehicles make mobility safe and accessible to all.”

According to Bosch, production of the AI on-board computer is expected by the beginning of the next decade.